Breeders' Cup 2012: Day One Review - Royal Delta the Queen

You cannot get away from memories of Zenyatta at Santa Anita - the track at which the great mare won two Breeders' Cup races and now has a statue in her honour - so it was perhaps fitting that day one of Breeders' Cup 2012 there resembled one of her performances: slowly away, towards rear, strong headway, finished with a flourish. 

It took until race five before we encountered our first Graded contest, but by the completion of race nine - the Ladies' Classic that Zenyatta herself had won in 2008 - not many were likely to be complaining about being short-changed. 

The Ladies' Classic promised to be an epic showdown between last year's winner Royal Delta, the talented if quirky Questing and two unbeaten Breeders' Cup winners in My Miss Aurelia and Awesome Feather. Something had to give, and in the event that something was not going to be the ever-reliable and gutsy Royal Delta. 

The expected front-runner Questing sulked from the start and was soon pulled up, but jockey Mike Smith on Royal Delta still ensured a Questing-like pace, going through the first half-mile in 45.81 seconds and ensuring that her rivals either let her get on with it or joined in a game played according to her rules. 

The latter ensued, and, one by one, Royal Delta's rivals fell by the wayside. My Miss Aurelia lasted longest, and was still a threat inside the final furlong, but Royal Delta had never quit before and did not do so here, holding her rival by a length and a half. 

In terms of Timeform ratings, it was just another day at the office for Royal Delta, a filly who regularly knocks out 128 performances. But as days at the office go, picking up a $2m race while confirming yourself the joint-third-best female racehorse on the planet (behind 136-rated Black Caviar and 131-rated Danedream, and alongside 128-rated Snow Fairy) takes some topping.

What's more, Royal Delta provided Smith with a record-breaking sixteenth Breeders' Cup win, no small consolation for being widely blamed for Zenyatta's only defeat in the 2010 Classic at Churchill Downs.  
  
It was the winning performance of the day, of that there can be no doubt, but a respectable runner-up in that category went to Beholder, a classy winner of an above-average Juvenile Fillies. 

Rather like the Ladies' Classic, there were unbeaten records on the line here - three of them in total - but Beholder, beaten twice herself, disposed of them with aplomb, making all and having enough in reserve to see off her old foe Executiveprivilege by a length.
 
A 122 rating for Beholder marks her down as the best two-year-old filly around and is only 3 less than My Miss Aurelia posted in this race at Churchill Downs the year before: and we know how good that one has proved to be.
 
The Juvenile Fillies Turf that preceded Beholder's race was not quite so classy and also proved to be messy on the sharp turf track. But it provided a welcome winner for the Europeans on a day when a number of their representatives encountered trouble of one sort or another, with French-trained Flotilla coming wide and late to prevail readily while running to a rating of 115.

"Messy on the sharp turf track" sums up the Filly & Mare Turf pretty well, also. Zagora avoided the trouble - unlike Brits I'm A Dreamer and the heavily-backed The Fugue - and was perfectly placed throughout - unlike the French filly Ridasiyna - before getting on top in the final furlong. 

A Timeform rating of 121 is about par for a winner of this race, but there was nothing "average" about the ride of Javier Castellano or about the training performance by one of the coming names in US racing, Chad Brown. 

It is easy to point out that "World Thoroughbred Championships", which is the self-styled tag adopted by the Breeders' Cup, is a misnomer, but a ban on Lasix with the two-year-olds (to be extended to all horses in 2013) may make it less so, and organisers must have been pleased that one of the races went to a horse trained in South America for the first time. 

That horse was Calidoscopio, an Argentinian-bred-and-trained nine-year-old who came from a tailed-off last to land the Marathon by four and a quarter lengths. His rating of 116 suggests he returned to the form shown when awarded Argentina's top race in 2009. Formerly top-class Fame And Glory has headed the other way and was reportedly retired having downed tools at halfway in this race.
Calidoscopio is trained by Guillermo Frankel (or Frenkel, depending on who you believe), so Frankel did make it to Breeders' Cup success after all! 

Frankel, the horse, will preside over proceedings on day two in much the way that Zenyatta can be considered to have done on day one. "Frankel by proxy" comes through not only Excelebration - who takes on the best horse in North America, Wise Dan, in the Turf Mile - but less obviously through St Nicholas Abbey, Treasure Beach and Slim Shadey, all of whom were trounced by the great horse at one stage or another. 

Breeders' Cup Extra out now, featuring 8 race previews, Jamie Lynch, US expert Simon Rowlands, Timeform Blueprints & much more! Get yours now!